New Jersey Medical Board Approves Plan for New Jewish Medical School

May 2, 2006: Dr. Bernard Lander, Founder and President of Touro College, has announced that Touro College has received the unanimous approval of the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners for a plan to open the state's first and only private medical school, to be known as Touro University College of Medicine.

"We are extremely pleased to have received approval by the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners and look forward to the next step, the accreditation process by the American Medical Association’s Liaison Committee on Medical Education," Dr. Lander said.

The April 19 decision, which followed a lengthy review process, paves the way for Touro to seek accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, an independent authority. The proposed Touro medical school will be the Garden State's only medical school that is not financed primarily by public funds. The new school will be the second Jewish-sponsored medical school in the country.

The approval recognizes both the demonstrable need to train more doctors in New Jersey as well as Touro's track record in the health care field. America faces a projected shortfall of 85,000 physicians by 2020. New Jersey ranks 33rd among the 45 states that have medical schools for the number of medical students per 100,000 population, and 56 percent of New Jersey’s residency training programs are filled with foreign trained graduates, twice the national average.

Touro aims to enroll 100 students in each class of the Touro University College of Medicine. The school, to be located in a 75,000 square foot building in Florham Park, will be retrofitted to meet national accreditation requirements with state-of-the art teaching space, laboratory and research labs, and library and computer resources, including virtual reality teaching tools.

"Touro's growth as an educational institution continues to be guided by twin commitments to building and sustaining Jewish life and to reaching out to the wider community," said Dr. Lander.

Touro has long been a national leader in medical and health care education. Touro's School of Health Sciences, based in Bayshore, Long Island, has close to 1,000 students enrolled in 14 programs, including well-respected programs in physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language pathology and forensic science and examination. Touro opened New York City's first program for the training of physician assistants, which has graduated 1,200 students.

In 1983, Touro established a Center for Biomedical Education, a cooperative five-year program leading to a master’s degree from Touro and an M.D. degree from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Touro University California, based in historic Mare Island in northern California, has a college of osteopathic medicine and a college of pharmacy, and Touro University Nevada, located near Las Vegas, also has a college of osteopathic medicine.